The Texas State Board of Education recently approved a social studies curriculum that disparages Islam and minimizes Black history.
Muslims and education experts who attended the board’s Aug. 31 meeting urged its members to reconsider adopting the changes, saying they are historically questionable and could lead to the ostracization of students based on faith.
“I feel attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong,” said Habiiba Quresh, 15, during the meeting covered by Texas Tribune. “I shouldn’t have to defend my religion in the middle of history class because of one sentence someone on this board wrote.”
The alterations made to the K-8 social studies curriculum do not “hold up to close historical scrutiny,” said board-appointed adviser Andrea Hutchison, the social studies curriculum coordinator at Proper ISD.
“I would warn us about including things that are not based on well-established secular sources.”
Board-appointed expert Robert Koons, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, described the altered curriculum as “not very reliable,” the Tribune reported. “I would warn us about including things that are not based on well-established secular sources.”
Examples include a reference to “early Islam” and “the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”
A motion to remove the word “brutal” was considered but failed.
Other lessons include discussions of “the teachings of jihad and how these teachings led to the expansion of Islam and the conquest of Christian lands” and the “significance of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks motivated by radical Islam, including the Global War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq and the decline of civil liberties due to the PATRIOT Act.”
The curriculum also includes a lesson explaining “the rise of radical Islam, including Iranian proxies, terrorism, Al Qaeda, September 11, 2001, and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”
The term “radical Islam” used in lessons 9 through 11 was selected instead of “narrowly focusing on terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and extremists such as Osama bin Laden.
“No credible scholar of history validates the bigoted caricatures of Islam this curriculum teaches,” according to the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its legal advocacy arm, CAIR Action Texas. “Texas students of every background deserve an education that tells the truth about their history and their neighbors’ history, not propaganda that teaches them to see each other as threats or erases them from the story altogether.”
The board’s action is just the latest assault on Muslims in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR a foreign terrorist organization last year, attempted to outlaw the group’s operations in the state and signed a law banning Muslim-led developments he designated as “Sharia compounds.”
As in other states, the recent rise in anti-Muslim hate in Texas is in part an outgrowth of Republican mobilizing ahead of the midterm elections, with campaign rhetoric referencing members of the faith as terrorists secretly attempting to rule the United States with Islamic law.
But CAIR also noted the curriculum minimizes the oppression and contributions of Black Americans in U.S. history and completely omits any reference to the struggles of the Palestinian people.
Removed lessons included any explanation of the “the causes and effects of westward expansion, including the Mexican American War and the expansion of slavery.”
Another lesson omitted includes the identification of “notable figures of the abolitionist movement, including William Lloyd Garrison, Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman” along with one identifying “the ideals of self-respect, self-determination, self-reliance and cultural pride of African Americans during the Black Power movement.”
The injustice of the updated curriculum is exacerbated by the board’s June vote to add the Bible as required reading for Texas public school students, according to Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “For example, the standards require high school world history classes to explain negative aspects of Islam, such as incidents involving slavery and religious wars, while not requiring the same of Christianity.”
And the political backdrop cannot be ignored, she added. “More broadly, these changes come as politicians are increasingly focused on forcing Christianity on Texas public school students and as some board of education members have shown hostility toward Muslim speakers during public hearings.”
CAIR, meanwhile, said it will be working against the curriculum before its scheduled implementation in 2030. “The board has turned our classrooms into a place where prejudice is taught as fact and entire communities are written out of their own history.”